If you're just coming here for the first time, uh... you're late. The site is no longer updated daily (see HERE for the story). But it's still kicking 1-2x a week, and it's better late than never! Before reading any of the "reviews", you should read the intro, the FAQ, the MOVIES I HAVE ALREADY SEEN list, and if you want, the glossary of genre terms and "What is Horror?", which explains some of the "that's not horror!" entries. And to keep things clean, all off topic posts are re-dated to be in JANUARY 2007 (which was before I began doing this little project) once they have 'expired' (i.e. are 10 days old).
Due to many people commenting "I have to see this movie!" after a review, I have decided to add Amazon links within the reviews (they are located at the bottom), as well as a few links to the Horror Movie A Day Store around the page, hopefully non-obstructively. Amazon will also automatically link things they find relevant, so there might be a few random links in a review as well. If they become annoying, I'll remove the functionality. Right now I'm just kind of amused what they come up with (for example, they highlighted 'a horror movie' in the middle of one review and it links to, of all things, the 50 Chilling Movies Budget Pack!!!).
Last but not least, some reviews contain spoilers (NOTE - With a few exceptions, anything written on the back of the DVD or that occurs less than halfway through the movie I do NOT consider a spoiler). I will be adding 'spoiler alerts' for these reviews as I go through and re-do the older reviews (longtime readers may notice that there is now a 'show more' which cleaned up the main page, as well as listing the source of the movie I watched, i.e. Theaters, DVD, TV) to reflect the new format. This is time consuming, so bear with me.
Thanks for coming by and be sure to leave comments, play nice, and as always, watch Cathy's Curse.
The title seemed familiar, so I checked twice to make sure I hadn't already seen/reviewed Fangs of the Living Dead (aka Malenka) on the site before I opened the still wrapped disc from the endless "Pile" (now an overfilled box) with the intent of watching it, reviewing it, and - unless it was great - sending it to the *other* box, the one full of discs that are waiting to be traded in on a literal rainy day*. "I don't want to have another Killer Nun situation on my hands," I thought, before starting the film and discovering that it actually starred the Nun herself, Anita Ekberg. I found that pretty amusing.
Most things are more amusing than the film, as it turns out, as it's pretty much a total snooze. It was the first horror film for Amando de Ossorio, who found success a few years later with the Tombs of the Blind Dead films but hadn't quite found his groove yet (some would argue he never did; his name is certainly not one that inspires me to watch his entire filmography), though he's not entirely to blame for the film's lapses. Apparently no one could decide whether to make a fully serious horror movie or a lighthearted one with comedy akin to the recent (and successful) Fearless Vampire Killers, but even if they did settle that before shooting began, de Ossorio is no Polanski, so I don't think that switcheroo was the only reason the movie doesn't really work.
It's also far too chaste compared to what else we had at the time; it's nearly bloodless, the women don't show off a lot of skin (forget about actual nudity), and the ending can't even bring itself to kill off the hero's horny pal - a character who seemingly only exists to be pointy teeth fodder. Nothing wrong with dialing things back and aiming for a more atmospheric and suspenseful take on the subject matter (which is more or less just Dracula), but de Ossorio isn't exactly delivering on those fronts either, so it's just kind of sitting there like a wet fart for large chunks of its runtime. The only time it really comes to life is in the last half hour, when the town's doctor (Carlos Casaravilla) takes a more active role in the proceedings as a sort of Van Helsing type, but one who has looked the other way on the vampire villain's evil deeds.
As for the villains, well... their whole story doesn't make any sense really, as part of the plot reveal (spoiler for 50+ year old movie ahead) is that they're not actually vampires, though the main one's demise is straight up vampire stuff. So were they lying about lying about being vampires? And why wait until the end of the movie to tell us this when nothing much has happened? Do it earlier and then spring something more interesting on us for the finale instead of an endless scene of the guy's body turning into a husk after being staked. To be fair though, there's another ending where that doesn't happen, and it's presented on the disc as a bonus feature, but it's in the original Spanish language so his not-dying monologue is a mystery to my ears. That ending also gives everyone a happy ending, except for perhaps the hero's buddy, who is now a vampire himself (huh?) and sends us off while comically chasing after a frightened woman. Hilarious!
Honestly the highlight of the disc is the commentary by Troy Howarth, who thankfully doesn't think too much of the movie himself and spares us 90 minutes of defending it. Instead he runs through the filmographies and careers of its players as you'd expect, but also gives some interesting historical background on Spain at the time, operating under Generalissimo Francisco Franco (at that time, *not* dead), as this was one of the first horror films produced by the country. He also notes a few interesting tidbits, such as the fact that a character's name of Vladis was NOT a little nod to Vlad the Impaler, as I assumed while watching, as the connection between Vlad and Dracula was not introduced until a few years later. That sort of stuff is why I always listen to the historian tracks even if I don't like the movie; might as well learn something rather than write the whole thing off as a loss.
But hey, sometimes the discs from the pile end up being worth keeping, which doesn't help me in my never-ending attempt to pare the collection down. I have no desire to keep this one, so thanks for kind of sucking, movie! That's a quarter inch of horizontal space I don't have to find on the permanent shelf!
What say you?
*I started taking walks on my lunch break in an attempt to shed a few pandemic pounds, so that eats up the time I have to go across town and give the box to some weird dude at a CD/movie store and come up with some random amount of cash to give me for it. But if it rains? I will stay dry, and RAKE IN THAT TRADE-IN CASH!
There is a moment in The Night House that shook me to my core, but it wasn't a particularly scary moment. No, it's a bit where Beth (Rebecca Hall) is having a dream that her dead husband is texting her, and when she looks at the message, we can see that there are other, older ones (from when he was presumably alive), unlike most movies where a new text is the only time this person apparently ever texted their loved one. Then, they double down on the surprises - when she wakes up and checks to see if the text was real, her phone is plugged in! Movie characters are always just leaving their phone right there next to them, unplugged, because these people never have to worry about a dead battery I guess. But Beth does!
Granted this is just me clapping for a weird pet peeve, but it does tie into one of the things that makes the movie work as well as it does: it feels very natural and our protagonist is relatable, allowing the ghost-y stuff to really get under your skin. Having just lost her husband to suicide, Beth's grief is manifesting in many ways: she drinks, she watches their home videos, she packs up his toiletries to toss them, and she ultimately starts going through his personal things trying to find answers for why he suddenly took his own life. And (thanks in part to Hall's terrific performance) we understand perfectly that, even though we never met her prior to this tragedy, this is all unusual behavior for her, and also that he was her "rock" despite never having seen them together. It's a balancing act that the script and director David Bruckner (and again, Hall) walk expertly.
It's also surprisingly funny at times. There's another great scene where Beth (a teacher) is confronted by a parent of a student who got a C in class, and while she's trying to be delicate at first and chalk her recent absence (in the mom's eyes, the reason for the lower grade) to "a personal matter", the mom keeps harping on it, so Beth just trys the blunt approach and tells her, mid-sentence, that he blew his brains out. Dark as it is, the woman's stunned reaction is a hilarious bit of comedy, and there are other moments like it throughout the film, even as Beth's grief enters the anger portion and she confronts one of the women she finds photos of in her husband's phone.
I can't get too much into that because spoilers, but I will say that part of the mystery involves these women, all of whom somewhat resemble Beth and may be connected to a mirrored version of their house that he has built across the lake from theirs. His suicide note was a cryptic message about Beth being safe now, and we learn that she once died for a few minutes after an accident before being revived, and if you think all of these things might be connected, you'd be correct, though exactly what is something Bruckner and co. thankfully do not feel the need to spell out with dialogue, trusting the audience to piece it together on their own. It's not a puzzler by any means; it was just refreshingly free of hand holding. With Hall being in just about every frame of the film (I think the final scene is the only time we ever see anything from anyone else's perspective) and often alone except for the possible ghost, it would mean a lot of talking to herself to convey exposition in a more traditional (read: dumbed down) manner, and I was pleasantly surprised to see they trusted their audience enough to not do that.
It's also light on traditional scares, something that will likely annoy any younger audiences who were hooked in by the trailer (which shows almost all of them), as they probably won't be able to connect to the drama either (though maybe they will in Covid times? Possible they've lost someone close recently). At times you feel the creative team would rather just focus on Hall working through it than deal with the haunting element, which is fine by me since I don't really get scared anyway, but I feel I should say it as a bit of a warning for anyone who might be heading out for some good ol fashioned "let's go scream together with a big crowd" horror movie viewing. Not only will the crowd be small and muted, but blah blah blah Delta, etc (you've heard it all by now), so if you want to wait for home, I would only sigh with how it relates to the theatrical success of a solid, ORIGINAL horror movie. As a human, and movie fan in general, I'll admit this one might actually work better at home anyway, even without the health risks being a factor.
I know this is a relatively short review for me, but that's part of what makes the movie work: its simplicity. Yes, Beth finds out things about her husband that ultimately has her looking at weird old books and even taking a mini road trip for info, but it never gets bogged down in this stuff; her working through it is the driving force, and unless you want multiple paragraphs about praising Hall's performance, there isn't much to write about without diluting the experience (I can also vouch for the score by Lovett, quite good!). If you were a fan of (HMAD book recommendations*!) Absentia, The Eclipse and/or The Presence, I think you'll enjoy this, and if you found them "boring" or whatever, then there isn't going to be much here to change your mind, though I still encourage you to see for yourself when you feel comfortable doing so. At the very least, it might give jealous spouses a reason to not be so quick to fear the worst when they see their partner looking at other men/women!
What say you?
*I was gonna just write a note here but made it a whole ass post instead of burying it in a review for a movie apparently few have seen. Click here for something cool re: my book!
Since my email address is public, I get a lot of weird (often automated) offers for ad space, running sponsored content, etc., all of which I ignore. Yes, it would be nice if HMAD was an actual revenue source, but if it means clogging up the site with things that aren't reviews, I'm not interested - I'd rather you guys got the same "clean" experience you've had for almost 15 years now (Christ...).
But a while back I got one inquiry that did warrant a little more attention: a representative from a Japanese publishing company who wanted to have the HMAD book translated and published under their label. Exciting enough on its own, but even better: I wouldn't have to do anything besides provide them with the original files, which are naturally still sitting in the same folder on my desktop, five years later. I send them that stuff, sign a tax form or two, and then several months later (covid stretched it out, of course) I got a little check for the privelege. It is the easiest job I've ever had.
And now it's out! They sent me a few copies as a complimentary gesture, and I gotta say: it's actually better designed than the real one (which was designed by me, not a professional). Not only is it smaller, but each entry has a thumbnail graphic of the poster, so something can catch your eye when flipping through each month (which are also given that little black square on the right side of the page so you can flip right to a particular month if you want, kind of like how a dictionary breaks down the lettters). And the index is far more robust than mine, noting not just the 366 titles but also movies that are mentioned at all! Apparently I mentioned Waterworld once, and now if you want to know why/where, they got you covered.
Of course you need to be able to read Japanese, something I can't do. In fact the only thing I'm still not sure on is the translation itself. I used an app to scan some certain parts (like, obviously, the Cathy's Curse entry) and it's definitely close enough to what I'm saying, though those differences I can't tell if they are a limitation of the app or the translator not being able to come up with something that would work in a different language. They did email at one point asking for clarification for a few things, mostly just a few examples of my own bizarre sense of humor not really coming across, but it's possible there are many more that didn't trigger anything. Long story short, I hope I don't unintentionally insult any Japanese readers by using a word or phrase that means something very different to them, or even simply confuse them with one of my lengthy asides that not only is unrelated to the movie, but also may have no significance to them in their country.
So if you, or someone you know is interested, you can head HERE for Takeshobo's official page for the book, which has links to buy it through them or other retailers. Not sure if there's a digital version, if that's your preference, but I guess if you can read the page you'll be able to figure it out soon enough. And if you are able to read it, please reach out and tell me how the translation is! I would really feel bad if anything came off as confusing to the reader due to my own less than graceful approach to the written word, especially given how my sense of humor doesn't often translate that well even in English when you can't hear the sarcasm in my voice.
And to everyone who has bought the original English version: thank you again! Something must have put the book on their radar, so anyone who bought a copy only helped get it to that point. You're all in my good graces, even the guy who gave it one star because I'm Irish (?).
Sincerely, ブライアン・W・コリンズ (that's how to write my name, apparently).
Gun to my head I would have guessed that Skinned Deep was an early '90s movie more or less produced for the VHS market, something that would have gotten coverage in Fangoria during those pre-Scream years where big screen horror was so intermittent that the mag had to noticeably step up its coverage of smaller films (the '80s rarely afforded them the opportunity). But nope, it was actually released in 2004 (by Fangoria, natch) and started shooting in 2000, long after the heyday of both the film's subject matter (Texas Chainsaw-esque demented backwoods killers) and the home video market it was chasing. DVD had taken over by then, as had the video chains over the mom and pop types, leaving these sort of things in the dust as Blockbuster would rather stock another copy of The Ring than devote shelf space to more than one copy of something like this.
No, this was clearly just a labor of love from writer/director Gabe Bartalos, making his debut as a director after years of makeup and FX work. His resume dates back to the mid '80s, and I swear I've seen him on at least a dozen DVD/Blu bonus features over the years thanks to his work on Frank Henenlotter films and Charles Band productions. Needless to say I was curious what kind of film he'd make on his own, and I was happy to discover it wasn't just a bland slasher that gave him an excuse to show off his FX skills every ten minutes, but instead offered a singular vision of a filmmaker who cared about every frame in the film, regardless of whether or not it had anything that would excite gorehounds.
The basic story is nothing new; a family of four is traveling, their car gets a flat, and the nearest place for help is run by murderous weirdos. But there's something "off" about the proceedings that should tell even the most jaded viewer (including me, at first) that this isn't going to be a run of the mill affair. The actors (heroes and villains alike) are all very bizarre and exaggerated, as if they stepped out of a David Lynch music video, and when the killing starts, Bartalos saves the most gruesome death for the young boy of the family, i.e. something most wouldn't dare to do at all. After everyone else in the family is dispatched, the focus falls squarely on the teen daughter, who catches the fancy of Brian aka Brain, so named because... well, he has a giant brain on his head.
Yes, this enters into sci-fi territory, as our villains have seemingly been created by, er, The Creator, a mysterious puppet master we meet later. Brain/Brian is seemingly sympathetic and longs to run naked through Times Square (a vision we see for real; Bartalos obviously didn't have permits and just shot the sequence guerilla style - the actor was subsequently arrested, but they got the shot!). His "brothers" are the more murdery ones, one is called Plates after the sharpened dinnerware he uses as weapons, and the other is the Surgeon General, the machine-mouthed guy on the cover. A few actors played him based on availability and what not (it was a long production, as noted) but Plates is played by Warwick Davis (Bartalos did his makeup for all of the Leprechauns), painted to look like an albino and dropping off kilter line readings into most of his scenes.
Heroine Tina runs afoul of them and other baddies over the course of the film's (slightly overlong) 97 minutes, but they take out others on occasion, like a group of elderly bikers who seek revenge after one of their number is killed trying to help the girl. Bartalos is seemingly well aware that this sort of movie can feel "samey" to the astute horror fans who will undoubtedly make up the majority of his audience (there is zero attempt at making this thing mainstream friendly, I assure you), so he keeps things forever lively by keeping Tina on the run, allowing the production designer enough of a showcase for an entire demo reel. When Tina ends up in a room that is covered ceiling to floor in newspaper, you truly get the sense of how much work went into the movie to keep it engaging. He could have thrown the girl in a typical bland basement room with a few pipes in the background, but instead you get this strange, claustrophobic visual that had to have taken dozens of man hours to put together.
It's that attention to detail that makes the film stand out where it could have been another 90 minute chase flick. Again, yeah, it could have been tightened in spots, and you need to forgive some wonky ADR and the like, but there is almost never a moment in the film where you can't pause it and say "Look at how much work they put into creating this scene", between the complicated makeup (Brain's took four hours to apply, and he's in it quite a bit), crazy set designs, and yes, the gore, which is mostly practical but Bartalos also knew better than to institute a ban on CGI. Any good FX artist knows that utilizing the best of both worlds is the way to get the most ideal results, and so some sneaks in here and there, and only a fool would complain about it.
Severin's blu has two featurettes, one a vintage piece from (I assume) the first DVD release back then, and a new retrospective where Bartalos and a few others answer fan questions. There's also a commentary track with pretty much the same people as the later retrospective, which is kind of annoyingly out of sync with the movie so there are times where Bartalos is saying "OK this shot coming up right..... HERE was (tech talk)" but from context we can tell he is referring to something we saw 15 seconds earlier. But otherwise it's chockfull of production info and anecdotes, with occasional ball-busting and self deprecation, i.e. an ideal track for both fans of the film and also for detractors who assume things like this can just be slapped together in a weekend. Even if you're not down with all of the movie's choices, no one can deny that it is the result of a hard working filmmaker that wanted to put his own spin on classic horror movie material, one who made sure to put every dollar of his (not large!) budget on the screen instead of blowing half of it on a pointless cameo by someone who didn't happen to have a horror convention on his schedule that weekend.
It's sad though, because I kept having the "They don't make em like this anymore" thought for a movie that was only a couple years old when I started doing Horror Movie A Day. I mean yeah it's depressing to think I'm that much older, but in general the idea of anyone doing this sort of thing (on film no less, though there are a handful of well-matched digital shots) is practically unthinkable nowadays. Indie horror exists of course, but the things that find distribution are mostly A24 lite affairs, with gonzo stuff like this being "underground" fare that probably costs less than I spend on electricity every year. It's rare I come across anything that the filmmaker spent years of their life tinkering with to get just the way they liked it, shooting when they could instead of shitting it out over a week and trying to salvage something from what they shot (on their iPhone). Oh, and doing it before he could ask people on the internet to pay for it, reducing their own interest in making sure it got done right. I'm sure those sort of productions still exist, but they don't come across my desk as much as I'd like. Hopefully that'll change.
The existence of Don't Breathe 2 is an odd one for many reasons, chiefly that it doesn't even bother to go with the thin premise established at the end of the first one, in which the Blind Man would follow Jane Levy and her sister to California to finish the job. Perhaps Levy couldn't be coaxed to return, or they realized they couldn't fake Los Angeles in Serbia, but either way they opted to do something else. But that they bothered at all is another puzzler; it's been five years, which is an eternity for a budding genre franchise, and before you say "it was delayed because of covid" - nope! They actually shot it last year; it's one of the very few movies to come out in 2021 that wasn't bounced around the schedule.
That said the action skips ahead eight years, so if Levy ever wanted to come back after all, they could go the prequel/midquel route and slot it in that sizable period. This film is pretty standalone; Stephen Lang's Blind Man mentions having lost a daughter but otherwise there's no real connection to the first film even as far as the first film's character goes, let alone its events. As long as you know he's a blind guy who isn't all that great of a human being (i.e. something you can glean from the trailer) you have all the context you need. In fact I actually wondered if they were attempting to retcon some of his lesser qualities or hope that we simply forgot them, but he actually refers to himself as a rapist at one point, which surprised me. He's wisened up from the original! (Where he specifically said he was NOT a rapist as he merely wanted to artificially inseminate someone - the ickiest gray area of all time?)
Anyway, the plot this time is that eight years ago he stumbled on a house fire (burning down from a meth lab explosion) and found a little girl who survived when her family presumably did not. So he takes her under his wing (kidnapping, essentially) and teaches her how to fight, read in Braille, etc. But he also won't let her out of the house much, or play with other kids, or anything like that, so naturally now that she's 12ish she's starting to question her world and how lonely it is. One day she attracts the attention of some lowlifes who may or may not be kidnapping people to take their organs, and so Lang has to spring back into action to protect her. But... does he?
SPOILERS AHEAD!
The wrinkle here is that the head lowlife, Raylan (Brendan Sexton III from Session 9), claims to be her actual father, having NOT died in the fire as we've assumed. The mystery of whether he is lying or not is part of the suspense, and I won't spoil that much here, only to note that the script's attempts at curveballs and misdirection never really pan out. Ultimately, everything happens pretty much exactly how you will probably expect it to, which is kind of a weird thing to be saying about an R rated thriller that dared to make the murderous villain from the first film into an antihero. Rather than lean into the fact that he's bad, they simply make the other people worse (and have him save a dog for good measure), which I found to be kind of a cop out. And it doesn't help that the characterization for the quintet of villains is pretty underwhelming; for this sort of "vigilante gets revenge against scummy dudes" kind of thing it's easy to think about The Crow, and how that film gave each of those guys some color and scene-stealing antics, but you get next to none of that sort of thing here. Two of them are actually brothers and we don't even learn this information until one of them is dead, nor did I manage to catch most of their names.
They also could have really surprised us and just killed The Blind Man off halfway through or something, letting the little girl (Madelyn Grace) to save herself using the survival skills he taught her. Sometimes they come into play, such as the film's highlight sequence (an early long shot in which she evades her would-be captors throughout the house), but for the most part she's gotta wait for Lang to come along and spring her loose from whatever predicament she's currently in. But given her age, we know she's gonna be just fine (same as with the original; we knew Levy would survive because she had to save her little sister from their over-the-top awful home life), so there really isn't much suspense to the proceedings once we know the truth of her parentage.
I was also curious why the script (again by Fede Alvarez and Rodo Sayagues, with the latter taking over the director's chair this time) waited so long to move the action from Lang's house to a decaying hotel where the bad guys have set up shop. The trailer made it look like it was an even split, but honestly I think there's only about 25 minutes left of the movie by the time Lang makes his way there. The new locale, and Lang's unfamiliarity with it, could have given the movie more room to play, but with so much of it at his house, it comes off as a retread for far too long, another crippling blow for a suspense film of this type. Apart from the aforementioned long shot sequence, and another bit where Grace has to choose between electrocution, drowning, or capture, there's precious little nailbiter kind of stuff here, which was the original's calling card.
That said it's an easy enough way to burn off 95 minutes (nothing worth risking a theater for though, if you're Delta-phobic or what not). Lang, pushing 70, gives a great physical performance, producer Sam Raimi gets some of his splatter in there (not as much as there seemingly should be though, considering how despicable the villains are), and it thankfully avoids any of the ickiness that dampened the fun of the original (as much as I laughed at the pubic hair sight gag there). I honestly think it'll play better to people who haven't seen the original, but if you were a die hard fan of that one I'm sure you won't mind watching Lang do his thing for another round. Still, if they make a third, I hope they think outside the box a bit; I noted in my review for the original that I would probably never bother watching it again because the suspense factor would be gone, but at times here I felt I was doing just that.
In retrospect, a string of box office duds may have been the best thing to happen to M. Night Shyamalan. After a couple misfires in a row (regardless of how you or I felt about them; in fact I'm quite fond of After Earth), the filmmaker either found himself unable to get big budgets or simply chose not to pursue them anymore. Either way he went off and made The Visit, which was a big hit (and proved, again, that filmmakers who knew how to make real movies were also better equipped to make found footage ones) and started a healthy relationship with Blumhouse and, by extension, Universal Pictures. Both outfits are known for letting filmmakers do what they want as long as the budgets are kept in check, a godsend for someone like Shyamalan who, as Old repeatedly proves, has idiosyncratic tendencies that either balance out or simply exacerbate certain weaknesses in his screenplays.
Luckily for me, I'm usually on board with such quirks, and was not surprised to discover how much I enjoyed the film, same as I have pretty much everything he's made thus far. I didn't see Last Airbender or his first two, pre-Sixth Sense films, but of his filmography otherwise, I'd slot Lady in the Water as the only one I didn't enjoy on some level; even The Happening (a close second last in that ranking) has plenty of ironic entertainment value ("Cough syrup") and a fairly solid first half. Like Stephen King, the filmmaker tends to whiff some of the early promise on a misguided ending, but while I wouldn't consider Old's denouement a home run, it's thankfully free of the collapses that made Glass and The Village harder to watch a second time when their solid setups ended up having lousy outcomes.
(SPOILERS ARE AHEAD THROUGHOUT THE REVIEW! Consider this an all purpose warning!)
It's possible that having pre-existing material to draw from helped him a little this time around; I've long said that he could benefit from a writing partner that could reign in some (emphasis on some) of his harder-to-swallow tendencies and refine his ideas into something a little less clunky. Here he is adapting a French graphic novel called Sandcastle, and while I haven't read it myself, some internet sleuthing has led me to discover that the basic plot is the same but he added his own ideas, including the ending. But even though he's being "unfaithful" to the text, I think that having it to fall back on and give him a loose road map of how to proceed with the story kept things working more or less smoothly.
By now you've all probably heard the elevator pitch: some people find a beach that ages them rapidly (someone does the math in the movie, and I think they come up with every half hour being about one year in real time) and also can't seem to escape. This gives the film a depressing ticking clock; they're not trying to stop a bomb or anything like that, they're simply trying to come up with a plan to escape while also gradually realizing that their time on this earth is being whittled away and thus maybe it's better to just make the most of what time they have left. Shyamalan isn't shy (sorry) about hitting us over the head with the basic idea of not wishing your life away; in the opening scene the mom (Vicky Krieps) scolds one child for wanting the ride to the resort to go faster ("Just appreciate what you see around you right now!") while also daydreaming of when her daughter will be older and have an even more beautiful singing voice than she does now.
I of course am guilty of the latter; I frequently bemoan my son being too young to enjoy this or that movie, needing assistance with things that require me to get off my lazy ass, etc.* But I also get sad when it's clear he's gotten *too old* for certain things; I packed up some of his Mickey Mouse Clubhouse DVDs the other day and nearly started crying, thinking of all the times he would excitedly dance to the theme song (and encourage me to dance along with him), an activity he's long since outgrown and will be one of many I'll wish to enjoy just one more time when I blink a few more times and watch him go off to college. That whole "live in the present" thing is so hard to keep in mind, so a movie (a horror/thriller no less) revolving around that concept of our time always being taken away from us is very appealing to me, the kind of thing that will allow me to forgive some blemishes.
I say this because, you know, it's an M. Night Shyamalan movie. By now you should know that will mean some strange performances from dependable actors (Ken Leung in particular seemed kind of bewildered at times), kooky dialogue, a distracting cameo by the man himself (luckily it comes pretty early - he's the guy who drives them to the beach), and - yes - a twist that you either have to roll with or let it kill the whole experience. Interestingly, this time around the twist itself is perfectly fine, in fact it's one of his better ones in many ways - but he adds another wrinkle to it that I found unnecessary. I'll have to spoil it to make any sense, so once again I'm going to warn you off, but I will confine it to the next paragraph, so just skip that one if you're here for minor spoilers but don't want the reveal given away.
For those still here, I kind of loved the surprise twist that the people who died on Old Island were in fact specifically targeted to go there due to their various illnesses, as there is a team of scientists and doctors using the island's mysterious aging properties to find cures for all of the world's diseases. It's a trial and error process, but it apparently works - we learn at the end that one of the victims' deaths proved to be the final key in creating a cure for epilepsy. Had the movie ended there, with the knowledge that these people weren't dying in vain, it would be fine, but Shyamalan opts to have it both ways, and let two survivors spill the island's secrets to the police, shutting down their operation. Sure, what they're doing has some serious moral issues, but I think the film would have been even more successful if the filmmaker let us debate about that for ourselves on the way out of the theater, instead of using his lead character to remove any such ambiguity when he "heroically" shuts it all down and prevents cancer or (since it was shot only a year ago) covid from being cured.
But again, these kinds of slip ups aren't rare in his filmography, so you should be prepared for something like that anyway. However, you might be more surprised by how gnarly the film gets at times, with the rapid aging element being used for less obvious highlights as our group of twelve characters spend their awful day at the beach. For example, wounds tend to heal quicker than they should, which means a few basic "someone gets cut and the wound instantly turns to a scar" kind of things, but also broken bones healing quickly despite being in the wrong place, or a surgery to remove a tumor being thwarted by the skin closing itself back up as they reach in to extract it. Shyamalan's films always kind of tiptoe around being full blown horror films, and while this is no exception, I feel it's the first one that enters EC Comics territory when it comes to some of its effects.
Ultimately, in its own strange way, it functions just fine as a simple "Don't wish your life away, appreciate your life and that of your loved ones" message movie. There are some genuinely sad moments in the film, stemming from both the adults finding themselves facing their twilight "years" by nightfall, and from the children who had their entire adolescence stolen from them. When two adult actors decide to make a sandcastle, out of context it seems silly, but in the film's reality, it's a pair of 6 and 10 year old children whose minds haven't developed enough to fully process what has happened to them over the past day. Yes, there are some inconsistencies with the aging (there are four versions of the son, one of whom is played by Hereditary's Alex Wolff, but only three versions of his sister), but again, there's a "just go with it" quality to Shyamalan's output that any moviegoer should be accustomed to after a dozen films. If you're the type to laugh off his work, this one certainly won't change your mind, but for those who have stuck around for the long haul, I hope you'll agree that this is one of his better films, and admirably more personal despite the concept.
What say you?
*I SHIT YOU NOT he interrupted me as I was writing this very sentiment to help him put a game in the Xbox. Basically I want him to age to the point of being able to figure that out for himself but NOT get too old to want to play said game(s) with me.
Even if I hated every minute of the three Fear Street films, I'd at least give Netflix credit for a. attempting something new (for the completely uninitiated, that would be a trilogy of interconnected films released over a three week period) and b. not dumping all three films at once. Some of their binge-loving client base may have scoffed at the notion of having to wait an entire week to see the next chapter (I'd love to see these self-entitled babies deal with watching the first two seasons of Lost in the manner we had to put up with), however I feel it was not only hopefully something they'll consider more often, but also motivated viewers like me to keep coming back.
Because here's the thing: I barely tolerated the first entry, 1994. After a decent opening (one so beholden to the opening of Scream they might as well have just named the soon-to-be-dead character "Drew" for good measure) we spent the next 15 minutes meeting our characters, and they were pretty much all insufferable to me. The heroine, Deena, was basically introduced yelling at her brother, and then after a quick chat with her besties (a pair of drug dealers), she met up with her recent ex-girlfriend and started screaming at her as well. Then we're given the rundown of a historical feud between the two towns of Shadyside and Sunnyvale, something either the budget didn't allow to depict or the makers simply thought dialogue would suffice; we're supposed to understand one town is rich and prosperous while the other is filled with degenerates and claptrap houses, but this distinction is never fully made clear (it doesn't help that the two town names are so similar that I've seen multiple reviews/tweets mixing them up). We mostly just see a bunch of jocks on both sides fighting, which is something that happens in pretty much every town.
So, basically, very little is working. Things pick up a bit when the killings start, because at least the characters don't yell at each other as often, but director Leigh Janiak and her writers make the mistake not once but twice of presenting kills nearly back to back only to make us wait again for the next, as opposed to evenly distributing them over the film's dangerously near-fatal runtime of just under two hours. And yes, Scream also has a long time between kills (after Casey and Steve, the next victim is the principal, nearly an hour later), but it also had the attacks on Sidney (house and bathroom) to make up for it, not to mention a more engaging, personal story as opposed to some hazily defined town curse. There's a bread slicer kill that has been championed on Twitter, and rightfully so - but by that point I had already decided this was Not For Me™ and kind of checked out.
Now, if they dumped all three films at once, I'd likely say "OK, well, I'll get to the others when I'm bored" and - judging from my history with many Netflix shows - probably never do that. But because the next one wasn't around yet, and also because I seemed to be in the minority for 1994, a week of social media hype for the first film and what could happen in the second resulted in me getting more and more interested in watching the second installment, 1978. It didn't hurt that this one promised the appearance of Gillian "Britta" Jacobs (as a brunette no less, my Achilles heel!) and a summer camp setting that suggested something more Friday the 13th-y than the debut entry could muster. Also, while its excess didn't bug me as much as some others, the '90s soundtrack in the first movie would obviously not be a *thing* in 1978, so I was a little curious about what sort of classic rock tracks Netflix would license for a movie aimed at kids who probably considered the first film's soundtrack to be "old" (I realize now that my listening to Dark Side of the Moon in high school is, time-wise at least, the same as a kid in high school now listening to Incubus. Christ).
In short, while most Netflix dumps mean that after a few days no one remembers them, a week of seeing folks' anticipation for the next one had me thinking maybe I should give it another shot. And thus on the day it was released I found myself watching a sequel to a movie I didn't care for, and - thankfully - finding it to be a better use of my time. It still had an alienating way of introducing our leads (more yelling! With bonus physical assault this time for good measure) and some pacing issues, but Janiak thankfully spaced out her kills (and even offed a few of the kids at the camp! *cue "Nature Trail to Hell"*), kept the licensed soundtrack selections to a minimum, and gave us a little more context for the war between the two towns that made it a little more clear to me. Also, it got around one of the crippling flaws of the first one, which is that its trio of killers would just run right by a potential victim if they didn't have any of the "marked" blood on them, which made it feel more like It Follows than a proper slasher, and also severely impacted the suspense when we knew someone would be safe if they didn't have any blood on their shirt. Remember that scene in Jason Takes Manhattan when he just storms through the subway chasing our idiot leads instead of wiping out all the trapped victims, and how disappointing that was? That's what 1994 felt like to me during *all* of its stalk scenes.
No, this guy will go after anyone from Shadyside, which is half the cast. This means we're denied a few things we should have gotten to enjoy, like this or that Sunnyvale jerk getting their due, but at least the potential body count is still high and varied enough to keep things suspenseful. On the other hand, the film revolves around a collossally dumb twist that does not work in the slightest (spoiler ahead, skip the rest of this long paragraph if you want to be "surprised"), which was established in the first film in a very clunky way by introducing Jacobs' character as "C. Berman" as opposed to her full name. The second film focuses on what happened to her and her sister in 1978, with Jacobs telling us her sister died, and then we meet the younger versions: Cindy and Ziggy. So, obviously, Ziggy dies and Jacobs is Cindy, or else she'd be "Z. Berman", right? Well, that's what they want us to think, but there is never even the slightest bit of doubt that Jacobs' character is Ziggy, and Cindy will be the one to die at the end of 1978's story. Near the end, we learn Ziggy's real name is "Christine", to explain the initial, but... why not just omit the word "Ziggy" in the first place? If we only know her in the present as "C", then she could be Christine or Cindy, and we'd still have a mystery, right? But with the clunky "C." nonsense, any halfway intelligent viewer would notice the attempt at subterfuge (ironically, I talked to a few people who were half-watching and never even noticed there was a twist attempt but still had no doubt that Jacobs was playing the grown up Ziggy). Plus, she is telling the story to 1994's survivors, and near the end one of them is like "Wait, YOU'RE Ziggy!" - how the hell was she telling this story about her own tragic past without revealing which person she was in the story? It's just so dumb, and needless.
This aside, I liked the movie more than the first; still had some issues, but overall I found it more my speed, and didn't even need social media peer pressure to get me interested in the third, even if the trailer suggested it was ditching the slasher stuff entirely in favor of witchcraft. Ironically, despite my preference for body count fare, I think the 3rd one, 1666, was the best of the lot; not only did it have almost NO pop songs (because duh) allowing Marco Beltrami's solid score to shine a little brighter, it also dropped just about every problem I had with the others (wonky pacing, aggravating characters) and finally giving us the story of Sarah Fier, the accused witch who may or may not be the root of all of Shadyside's problems. The cast from the other two all come back as their own ancestors (or just others; Sarah is played by the same actress who plays Deena in the 1994 segments, though they aren't related and the movie even tells us that the real Sarah didn't look like her, but thematically it works) and struggle with the old timey accents, but the entire period detail is unconvincing so it fits in a way; almost like you're watching a '90s kid interpret the events through their own mindset as opposed to one rooted in reality (with the Deena/Sarah casting fitting perfectly in that sense).
Fier's story turns out to be more interesting than we'd been led to believe thus far, culminating in a pre-death send off speech that is far and away the highlight of the entire trilogy. And (surprise of sorts coming in) the 1666 part of the tale is only about half of the movie; we then return to 1994 for the finale that ties everything together in an effective way, with the 1994 kids teaming up with Jacobs (1978's survivor) to settle the business that started in 1666, once and for all. Whether it will be enough to win over anyone who flat out hated the first two movies, I don't know, but if you feel the way I did about them I think you'll agree that the way they built on each other almost even retroactively improved the others. I can't say with certainty that I'll ever make time to rewatch 1994 again, but if I did, I think I'll enjoy it a bit more, if only for the sequels filling in all the town rivalry backstory that was driving so much of the first film, and knowing the characters eventually redeem themselves. Also, I tend to find any movie that suffers from a slow pace is usually easier to watch a second time around, now that you're adequately prepared for its lapses.
The final shot of 1666 sets up a sequel, and given the response it seems Netflix would be silly to fail to deliver on that promise, especially given the wealth of RL Stine source material to draw from. Also, I would be remiss not to mention that, as with the recent Freaky, the films do an excellent job at offering representation (both with regards to race and sexuality) without making a big deal about it, which to me is the best way to do it - without making themselves a target for the ignorant, such folks will likely watch without even realizing how natural and easy it can be. So even if the series had to gradually win ME over (to be clear for the skimmers among you, my ranking is 1666 > 1978 > 1994), it's great that the younger crowd it's aimed at will likely see someone they can identify with in this kind of film, something my non straight white horror pals of the same age never really got when we were growing up, as both LGBTQ and POC characters were always secondary at best (the Black guy in Friday the 13th Part 2 doesn't even die! He just disappears! And I don't think the series ever had a queer character at all). On that front, the series is a resounding success, so if they can work on their storytelling a bit and how/when to dole out exposition in a way that is engaging instead of obtuse, they'll have something that truly lives up to the films that clearly inspired them.
Even if I disliked 2005's House of Wax, I'd be forever indebted to its existence, because in the Fangoria writeup on the film around the time of its release, director Jaume Collet-Serra noted that it was actually more of a remake of Tourist Trap than its Vincent Price namesake. Knowing next to nothing about Tourist Trap, I tracked down a copy and quickly fell in love with it; in fact it's one of the very few DVDs in my collection that I've watched more than once or twice, as there's almost always another good excuse to revisit it. But, sort of as a bonus in retrospect, I quite liked House of Wax too, and watching again for the first time in over fifteen years (Jesus...) proved it has held up nicely.
In fact I'd almost say it was the best Dark Castle movie if not for Orphan, which is, incidentlly, also from Collet-Serra. I credit him with 50% of Wax's succes, if I'm being honest, as the script (by the Hayes brothers) is nothing particularly special on its own. While it admirably moved away from the Price film (naming a character "Vincent" is about the only connection it has beyond the title) and even Tourist Trap (albeit to a lesser extent), it's for the most part a fairly generic slasher on the page. Our characters run through all the cliches: taking a shortcut, having car trouble, poking around creepy places... in some ways it's almost admirable how unambitious it is on that level, as if they knew whatever flourishes they added would be ignored and any such ideas should be saved for another screenplay where inventiveness might be better received (as any Friday the 13th filmmaker can tell you, the more you divert from the formula, the more you risk angering the fanbase). The one thing they do bring to the table is allowing cell phone use and even letting someone be alerted to danger by a phone message, instead of going the usual "no service" route early on like most of these things. So I'll give the writers that much.
But Collet-Serra is giving 110%, so that you might not even notice how on-rails it can be at times, especially to anyone who had seen the then-recent Texas Chainsaw remake, which it often resembles right down to surprisingly killing the heroine's boyfriend first (a move that might even play better now since said boyfriend is Sam Winchester himself, Jared Padalecki, i.e. a guy you'd think would outlast the three other dudes). Crane shots, diopter shots, long lenses... at a time when TV directors were getting these gigs and giving the movies no personality at all, this newcomer was clearly fired up, doing the sort of work that should make it no surprise he'd be helming big budget Liam Neeson movies in a few years. That he wasn't afraid to hold back on the gore/violence (even against the heroine, who loses a finger and probably wouldn't want to apply lipstick anytime soon after her ordeal) was just icing on the cake; even if shot for PG-13 I suspect his efforts would have been noticed and put him on the list of people to keep an eye on in the future.
The other half of the movie's strength comes from the production design. By now this was sort of a guarantee with the Dark Castle movies, but they hit their apex here with the titular house, which (unlike the original) was indeed made entirely of wax, allowing the fiery finale to showcase some truly icky visuals even though blood/violence wasn't really a factor by that point. There's something incredibly gross about seeing our heroes endlessly sinking and clawing through the mud-like house as it slowly caves in around them (I think I heard on one of the bonus features that it was peanut butter), and after seeing a million scenes of the angry killer smashing through a door to get at his would-be victims, it's kind of great to watch one casually slice through it and then peel it apart without really breaking a sweat. Even if you hated the rest of the movie, that ten minute climax would be something you'd dig, I think.
And the wax figures (read: corpses covered in wax) are no slouches either, as Elisha Cuthbert and Chad Michael Murray run across well over a dozen as they make their way through the town and give us closeup looks at many (one of which the camera lingers on for a bit as if setting something up, but turns out was a *payoff* for a deleted prologue showing her demise). As we learn on the behind the scenes, most if not all of them were actually living people wearing wax masks, as opposed to just dressing up mannequins or whatever. While this may have been a needless expenditure (not to mention set the filmmakers up for gaffes when the actors inadvertenly moved a bit), it pays off - we've seen dummies/corpses propped up in any number of movies, but the unspoken fact that they're legitimately alive gives their scenes (particularly the movie theater sequence) an extra dose of atmospheric creepiness.
As for the cast, they're, you know, doing their job. Even Paris Hilton seems to "understand the assignment" as the kids say today, and I can't tell if it's funny or sad that, despite her notoriety (and the film's "See Paris Die!" ad campaign) she's actually more likeable than anyone in, say, Texas Chainsaw 3D or some of the other films in this vein that came along later. Hell, I'd root for her over most of the people in the two Fear Street movies that have been released thus far, and it ain't out of any particular fondness for the woman - she's just more sympathetic. Her death IS great though, and I'll always wonder if they pumped it up a bit after she was cast. Also, having not seen it since it came to DVD (i.e. long before Friday the 13th 2009), it was funny to see that Chad Michael Murray's role in the film is a lot like the one Padelecki played in F13, as if he took that role if only to make up for being killed off so quickly here. "Now it's my turn!"
Scream Factory's blu-ray has a new transfer that looks fine to my eyes (as I've noted in the past, I'm not particularly diligent when it comes to tracking these things; as long as I don't have to adjust my existing settings or say "Hey, this looks like shit", I think it's a good presentation) and carries over all of the bonus features from Warner's own DVD/Blu. They also add four new interviews, including one with Hilton, who is very proud of her work here and speaks highly of the cast, Silver, etc. Unfortunately, as was the case before there's almost nothing from Collet-Serra across the board; he pipes in with a few soundbites on the fluffy making of, but that's about it. I would have loved to have known why they cut the original opening, as not only did it have a great kill but the movie took its time to get to the carnage, so it would have bought it some goodwill for those who were getting impatient.
Somewhere on those older features Silver notes that the movie will be in theaters on Halloween, but that ended up not being the case as it was moved up to May, and I'd love to know more about that. Not only did that potentially eat into their post production time, but it also may have cost the movie a few million at the box office, as if they waited they would have the star of Supernatural as another marketing hook (the show premiered that September) but also nabbed the people who tend to get more excited about horror movies in October than they do in May. I assume it was because the October schedule ended up being sort of competitive with IP offerings (The Fog, Doom, and Saw II, all with far more built-in awareness than a 50+ year old Vincent Price movie offered), but again, this is the sort of thing the director would probably address if he was on hand to give his thoughts. Oh well. Maybe for the eventual 4K UHD? I'd be down to get it again; that peanut butter wax will look more viscous than ever!
Sorry for the relative quiet the past two weeks here, but there's an excuse besides laziness for once: I was researching and then writing this mega-article about the original version of Wes Craven's Cursed, which I was finally able to watch thanks to an anonymous friend (read: don't bug me about how to see it for yourself). The article is up now at the Screamfest site, so if you're starved for some BC-ified rambling, or just a Cursed fan who happened by, head on over and check it out. Regular HMADing will resume shortly; yes I watched Fear Street 1994 but didn't like it much, so hopefully 1978 will either be more to my liking or, if not, give me enough to write something on why it's not working for me (though given its serial nature I think I'd still like to wait for the final installment before passing judgment). I also have the new House of Wax blu on deck (yay!) and Purge 5 when I get a chance to see it. So it'll pick up soon, promise!
HMAD-ing is actually somewhat expensive! If you can, help BC pay for his various movie-getting services (Netflix, Amazon, buying used DVDs, etc.)! Thank you!!!
